Look, my grandparents were... Not good parents to my mom. She always wanted to have a family of her own & NOT repeat their mistakes, but she never tried to find another pair of adults to baby her in her twenties. People with sh*tty childhoods often wanna break the cycle. 1/

Missing/wanting a family is not the same as wanting to be a kid. Wanting to be a kid again in your twenties is... Troublesome. Rey wanting a family as an adult was Rey identifying with a mother role. TFA novelization is pretty clear about this. 2/

SW was always a coming of age story. And was never too subtle about its symbolism. Padme & Anakin beget Leia & Luke, both of whom echo their parents: like Padme, Leia is also an apt politician. Luke is a Jedi, "just like my father before me". But this is not just a metaphor. 3/

This is a story of a family that lives on despite the tragedy. Luke & Leia restore the hope after the tragic demise of their parents. Eventually, no matter how painful, all people must learn to live w/o their parents. That's why Rey's parentage revelation worked in TLJ. 4/

Rian understood very well that SW is essentially a coming-of-age story. And that's why TROS Rey is so tragically regressed. And just pure tragedy. B/c while Padme&Anakin continued to live through their children, Rey's life ends with her. And her ghost parents. 5/

And of course, we can imagine that post-TROS she makes a new Jedi training temple or adopt children or even makes a family of her own
But the thing is, nothing in the movie or in the novel implies this. They genuinely thought it was ok to leave a young woman, the first female 6/

Jedi protagonist, regressed, infantilized, alone on a desert planet, wearing virginal white like a Christian saint, all of this after 2 movies that were gradually telling a story of her sexual awakening & maturing. After TFA where Rey said this: 7/

That's why Rey's arc ends in TLJ. There's no heroine's journey in TROS. Just American monomyth. And how woefully empty & spiritually corrupt it is, especially when put side by side with the greatest SW ever made - The Last Jedi. 8/8